Samppu

I agree. Even talking about "minifigure scale" is a bit ambiguous, because minifigures are not downscaled humans - they have huge heads and overly wide torsos. Hence, the absolute "minifigure scale" depends, whether we talk about the length, or the height, or the size compared to the head/helmet. For this reason, usually small vehicles seem reasonably "minifigure scaled" even if they were absolutely longer than they were supposed to, because they usually look just perfect in comparison to the size of the head and helmet of the figures then. For bigger buildings and ships I don't think a perfect match to reality is even desirable to pursue. Think about a MOC of a hotel for example. Hotels in real world tend to have hundreds of rooms, but if you make a MOC hotel with even ten rooms, that would be huge, and merely adding its size by replicating rooms would not give you anything interesting to the build anymore. I think the same is true for Star Wars builds in most cases. Sail Barge, or any other Star Wars vehicle, is reasonably minifigure scaled to my mind if it contains all the iconic and interesting locations within it (perhaps some compromises might be necessary but as a general idea), it is wholesome in the sense that the minifigures can access all the rooms via doors and ladders etc. and the outcome compares in a reasonable way to its environment, in this case to the skiff set. Hence discussion whether it should measure a few centimeters shorter or longer according to some itself ambiguous metric seems a bit misleading and unimportant to my mind, if all the previous conditions are met anyway.

It very likely affects the end result so the base color should be unicolor for the best effect. You may not actually notice the difference between just two individual bricks when testing but you are likely to notice the difference between larger areas later on, so a simple test does not guarantee a good result on a bigger scale. Though the base color doesn't need to be LGB necessarily, white can in fact be better in order to make the overall look shinier.

Particularly children don't necessarily see it that way. When I was 9 and watching episode IV, I actually did not have a clear conception that stormtroopers were humans (after all, the droids existed at that point already). Like logically and morally you are right, but human mind doesn't always work that way. And when masked soldiers die, their emotions do not show to the viewer, which makes it easier to accept their death. (Conversely, the heroes always take the helmet off in Hollywood for this reason, even if they initially had one. Mandalorian is in fact perhaps the first example who really doesn't.)

I admit I cut some corners, but to be precise: The budget per minute of show was low compared to movies. Though this is standard for all television shows, so Mandalorian is not any worse in this sense. As you said, in fact better. Nevertheless, Game of Thrones creators reported struggling with the same problem, but at least personally I feel they managed to come up with good results in the end considering the effects, the battles and the locations of the show. Mandalorian is objectively small scale in these regards. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, but it does not include a massive space battle, a city with crowding inhabitants or an exotic planet with epic terrain and more than a village to its population. Mandalorian does build some story arch, it is not totally devoid of it, but nevertheless, its structure is mostly episode based, not continuous. For comparison, Game of Thrones has a continuous story line where the beginning of each episode continues from where the previous ended, whereas Doctor Who is similarly episode based with isolated missions taking place during each episode with some bits and pieces here and there to add on an overall story arch. Mandalorian resembles Doctor Who in this sense. Again, not that it should be a bad thing in itself, but I am a little afraid that they did not even have an option for anything else (during the first season I mean). And sure, there is killing indeed. I should have been more precise. Bad guys are in fact allowed to kill. It is that the "good guys" are not allowed to kill to not show children an example of bad moral. But you are right, this is not only Disney's rule, even if at least I feel that they tend to be more strict about it. Just for a funny example, I actually laughed when I realized that in Jedi Fallen Order Cal Kestis actually does not kill a single enemy with a face by himself. It is always some npc executing the final act. (Again, it does not make the game and its story any worse, it was superb, and they conducted it very well under those rules. I merely argue that those story solutions about killing boss enemies were based on such rules indeed.) Personally I think that this killing and moral example issue is treated weirdly both by Disney and Lucasarts as well. It makes sense to have shows aimed for children with good examples and reasonable balance of violence and other bad things. But then those shows perhaps would be better fitted around some other theme than the life of a professional killer or war itself (Clone Wars has the same issue, though to a lesser extent). Yet I underline that Mandalorian was not a bad show, not objectively and not for me personally. And I was not sarcastic about baby Yoda, it works perfectly well for its role and was a genius idea. - Samppu

A valid notion. And I will stop diverging the set discussion to this comment, but I think it might do some good to remind us all about the things, why we do this in the first place. So to cheer the atmosphere up on my behalf, I am a die hard fan for the original movies and I have read almost every single book, and many of the comics of the original Expanded Universe, and I have enjoyed some selected bits of the Disney content as well. What got me into Star Wars was Episode IV, when I saw it on television, when I was 9 (now 32). And then the original trilogy thereafter, but that was a childhood adventure for me, where the Rebels were good, and the Empire was bad, and the good finally beats the evil. The kind of black-and-white but still mesmerizing and intriguing story with desperation, betrayal, arrogance, growth, defiance and resolve, which as themes deeply engaged me as a child, who by then only understood the world from the perspective of an innocent and safe worldview with no major conflict or evil in it. And most importantly, you could imagine yourself as a Jedi (or some other hero, but for the 90% of us, I would bet it is a Jedi) in that Universe, being part of the events or creating your own story. The latter was a quite literal joy with the Legos. Yet then as a teenager that Universe grew darker, happily coinciding with my own growth at the time. There was a massive war, which was governed by the same person on both sides, ruthlessly letting everyone die for nothing to gain power for himself. A fatherly figure, who disguised something dark beneath the smile, but that darkness held secrets not even the Jedi would dare to know. And then a young man tragically destined to trade everything he had for those secrets, you as a by-stander wondering and eerily hoping that he could still choose otherwise. All of this were part of my mental growing as a teen, and it grew into an escapistic mirror of reality. A version of a different life and realm, which I could control myself and where I could project any fantasized twisted human behavior I ever wanted. Both in an imaginary world and with the physical adaptation with Legos. Yet there was still something more to become. I started to read the books, and the whole reality of Star Wars went into revolution. First in seemingly minor ways. Thrawn showed that you don't need to be a Jedi to have awe-inspiring power. C'baoth turned out to be a twisted image of cardinal evil breaking my illusion that evil was based on some universal source of black energy, when the cloned Jedi master in fact was merely a chaotic psychopath as a result of mental imbalance. But more major insights were coming up. The rebels finally won the war, but were on the edge of another - with themselves. They were no longer simply good, but faced with the same difficult decision as the Empire was before. Engage in disputes with violence and become the mirror of the Empire they destroyed before? Or to withdraw and let the member worlds of the New Republic fall into chaos and decay? If not before, finally the prophesized Yuuzhan Vong made the Empire and efficient authoritarian regime seem like a missed opportunity. These kinds of situations occupy my personal realm of Star Wars nowadays, in mental imagery and in my Lego version of the Universe. I actually play in that world, where I have built factions with armies and vehicles, planets with civilians (with certain adjustments to have a sensible scale in things, but that is another topic) and characters with rich and contradicted backstories. The only difference to the way I used to play as a child is that I nowadays use dice (not very unlike to the role playing games and some strategic board games) in order to simulate luck and coincidence, so that I cannot entirely control every outcome of a decision or a battle. My characters can even die, and it kinda even feels a bit sad to give up of one that you really started to like just because the dice showed you that he got a mortal wound into his chest in a firefight. So this paints some picture, hopefully a little bit more cheerful one for a while, why I love Star Wars, and consequently Lego Star Wars. I build my Universe 99% of my own MOCs (simply because I love the building aspect of Legos as well), so the sets have news value to me mostly from the perspective of the minifigure parts, even if I occasionally appreciate elegant and innovative, or nostalgic, designs of the sets as well. They are mesmerizing and I always look after them and sometimes take inspiration from them. Surely getting the Desert Skiff (Nien Numb and the Sullustan head!) and a few dropship vs. speeder battlepacks when they land on the shelves. - Samppu

I agree, and I was a little confused why the series earned so much plaudit in the beginning considering that mostly nothing major happens during the first season.. However, I don't blame the creators entirely, because it is clear they were (are) being governed by Disney officers, which shows in many ways. For one thing, the budget per episode is small. No big cities or exotic planets or big fights. Mostly all fighting is small scale skirmishes, and locations compare to those that you would see in fan made movies. Mostly regular forest terrain, perhaps a blue fish here or there reminding us that it is still Star Wars. It feels like that the whole project was initially a B class addition to the lore from Disney's perspective. For another thing, the creators clearly were forbidden to use the Expanded Universe as their inspiration during the first season, as if Kathleen had not made up her mind, how the whole series should connect to the rest of the lore, or should it even be entirely separate from it. For this reason the entire first season goes from one individual episode to another, almost none of which builds any greater story arch or connection to the things we might already recognize. Then suddenly in the season two it appears as if Kathleen got excited that ok boys, you actually scored some fame, now you can refer to anything you want. And then they do. Suddenly we get Boba Fett, Luke Skywalker, even Ahsoka and Thrawn, and dark troopers etc. All of which in principle could have been in the first season already, but none were. Then there is the Disney contract, which includes at least the following things: Main character has to be an orphan. Check [x] (And not just Din Djarin... Think about other Disney Star Wars heroes. Even Han Solo who in the original Expanded Universe was from a happy middle class Corellian family.) No excessive violence. Check [x] In fact, preferably no violence to any person with a normal face. Check [x] (This is why we don't see Imperial officers all that much, not in Mandalorian, not in Jedi Fallen Order either...) Moreover, no killing. Check [x] (The only killing by the main character in Mandalorian 1 & 2 happens in the pilot, and even that is caused by getting cut in half by a door, not directly killed by the main character. If you wish, you can exercise similar thought play on Jedi Fallen Order... Stormtroopers do not count.) You can imagine how this list continues... But if anything to be praised, Filoni and Favreau had the most genius insight regarding these limitations. Think about it yourself: if you want to create a looming and mysterious, badass character who appears mighty and violent, how could you possibly do that with all the previous limitations and more? Indeed, put a baby on his lap! Then every time he intends to shoot someone, make the baby show its big baby eyes, and the badass character can put the pistol in his pocket while still retaining his aura of being a badass bountyhunter who in other circumstances would have pulled the trigger. Still, peace to all who enjoyed it, Mandalorian is an adorable and entertaining show with funny humor and sympathetic characters, and I liked to watch it as well. Personally I just wished for something different. In this case, it was for something dirty and ethically problematic from the premise of a main character, who is a professional killer. In the general case for Star Wars, it has been for something epic, intriguing, philosophically or morally challenging choices with sometimes even poetic touch to their presentation (like in Revenge of the Sith, particularly the book), not meme humor, dogmatism and you know the rest. Yet when it comes to Lego, Mandalorian has brought us mesmerizing parts for one's own community of Mandalorians. This is a bid deal at least for me. After all, I do love the Mandalorians as a people in Star Wars, and they heavily populate my personal Star Wars universe, Lego and otherwise. We probably would have not seen the two battlepacks with them and all the other Mandalorian parts without the show. - Samppu

At least I have noticed it as well, though compared to the problems with the general color consistency (especially the color yellow has horribly inconsistent shades between individual bricks) and misprints on helmets (honestly, some custom makers produce nowadays more qualified helmets - the modern scout trooper still being an exception of excellence in the Lego brand), I have not really bothered myself about it. - Samppu

Very interesting, thank you for explaining this! - Samppu

Wow, I would be really curious to hear about this! Like in general did he introduce the concept of the ship personally (I guess so?) or alternatively was it accepted or maybe even introduced by the Lucasarts or someone else first, or did he just imagine the concept and then someone else tried to give it a picture, how it should look like. - Samppu

Oh, I really love that book and seeing this marvelous piece inspired me to grab that story from the shelf again! - Samppu

Wow, love these! What is the head piece for Darth Nihilus?

Haha, made my day.. :D

True.

Ironically, this is very true. In addition, I would be happy if Lego or other companies alike would show some bold moves by not caring about random and totally pointless shouts that only add up to the cancel culture in these kinds of cases, where there obviously is nothing bad behind the product. I think what he is doing with the reviews is a smart move from his point of view, as the information is still there as pointed in the earlier comments, but he can safely say to anyone accusing him of leaks or whatsoever that all he did was a review.

Technically, all the lightsaber "hearts" are white. Even those that have a colored such as green or blue glow around the white heart. It is this glow that is somewhat colorless for Ashoka's new sabers. Speaking of which, it would be cool to have dual-molded bars with white hearts.

I totally agree, but I would at least personally still prefer any set to no set. Though the same policy has been around for cheaper sets as well. No Cody in the Grievous fighter even if the set itself almost screamed to have it. No AT-RT driver in the Kashyyyk AT-RT Anniversary set. Luckily Clone Army Customs has high quality customs for those, but still.

I only build MOCs myself, so the minifigures are usually the only reason to buy SW sets instead of just buying parts elsewhere, and I bet I am certainly not the only one following this philosophy, so it is really weird they do not bother with more interesting figures in opportunities like this. There are other examples, too. There are, of course, many more collectors, AFOLs and casual Lego lovers alike, than pure MOC builders, but I would still guess that the increase in sales following better minifigures - which also attract collectors as well - would easily be worth it. Especially in this case Beru Lars would not need a new mold, just a new print and a suitable hair piece, so the problem would not be about the budget.

Haha, I can totally imagine this scenario in my head... :D The employees gathering around the morning coffee table when the CEO crushes in and asks if the Episode V sets are ready as they are going to the production line tomorrow, when the brave one tells that he spoke about Episode VI earlier. "The difference between V and VI is I, aren't I?" the CEO laughs and leaves the room leaving the employees staring at each other. That one as a joke, I am honestly very happy that we get more scout trooper helmets (also in this year's Advent calendar) and that Lego actually pays attention to the traditional Expanded Universe lore.

I weigh in to this a little, because I consider the rage on these mistakes was in fact justified (albeit in the internet it easily gets out of proportion, but that is how it tends to work, unfortunately). It is not that these mistakes themselves were so bad (we do have a clone pilot relatively easily accessible for those who desire it, and I did not believe a second that they would have made a new mold of any kind with this set, not for Cody nor the pilot on the basis how they have treated such opportunities before - e.g. missed AT-RT pilot in the 20th anniversary walker and missed Cody in the recent Soulless One). Rather the problem that enraged the people was the highly unprofessional attitude reflected in the ignorance whether the figure is a pilot or a commander "because people anyway only remember seeing a yellow clone". For anyone buying such expensive sets, these things do matter and such details shouldn't be that hard nor expensive to take care of. Additionally I think this episode reflects one root reason behind many short comings in Lego SW production line during the recent few years, which - as far as I am aware of - is that some of the key designers in the Lego SW team have been working there since the very beginning now two decades back in time. They were certainly the best available recruits back then who were also highly enthusiastic about the original trilogy, because that was all that there was to Star Wars back then. But things have drastically changed since then. The original designers are no longer the best nor even the most enthusiastic. We have tons of new content (I would bet that the original old school designers have not bothered to pay attention to look through it all), a myriad of new revolutionary parts and a world wide pool of genius builders who could make child friendly, low part count but still miraculously impressive snowspeeders with their left hand, whereas all we get from the original designers are repetitions of the very same design that has been around now two decades. These kinds of examples, the snowspeeder in particular but also the small things like the clone commander vs. pilot issue, are clearly a sign that the problem is no longer about time or resources.

Missions sounds great, I love the idea of actually trying to make way through something that associates to that game mode. Could there be a versus match from time to time as well? Two builders who mutually accept to challenge each other competing to accomplish the same Mission?

An additional idea I am just throwing out considering the maintenance cost mechanism I introduced in the previous message. Would it be fun and simple enough, if the types of the planets would follow a logic that each faction must have at least one planet of the farmland type and at least one planet with a shipyard, or if they don't, their maintenance cost would go up some number of points until they conquer a planet that has them. In addition, it would be fun to have a rule that if your faction did not have a shipyard at the moment, every vehicle of that faction that appears in a build must be somehow rugged or rusty. Similarly if your faction did not have farmland in its control, your builds must show problems with famine or lack of supplies. Sure, no problem, I am totally intrigued by this game. In personal life I have been working with my studies very hard, so I haven't really had the chance to join this yet, but I am now eagerly looking forward for the upcoming season. I totally agree with the freedom to choose issue, and like you said, equal number of builders does not necessarily produce equal number of XPs due to different experience and time available for each builder, so it is a fair and a good choice to try to get everyone interested in, be it in any faction they wish to join. I am also glad if the maintenance cost idea spawned interest. It is just a thought I am throwing, so anyone can feel free to develop or use it further or then not.

A concrete idea regarding the previous message and the point 2 about balancing the count of the Victory Points. This idea is inspired by the mechanism that the board game Eclipse uses. Gaining control over a planet could be balanced between unequal factions with the idea that each planet that a faction owns adds up to a maintenance cost. This cost could be counted with e.g. the following table: The number of planets a faction owns: The maintenance cost in XP: 1 0 2 1 3 2 4 3 5 5 6 8 7 13 ... ... Etc. (the cost follows the Fibonacci numbers, which means adding the two previous numbers together, e.g. 2 + 3 = 5 and 3 + 5 = 8 etc.) The cost could in practice mean that when fighting over control of a planet, the cost would be reduced from the XP each faction is putting to conquer that planet. For example, if the Empire had 7 planets in its control and the Rebel Alliance had 5 planets in its control, the maintenance cost of these planets would be 13 for the Empire and 5 for the Rebel Alliance. Then when they contested over the control of a planet, the XP the Empire is producing would be calculated by summing up all the XP the builders are making on that planet, say, 41 XP, and then reducing the cost, in this example 13 XP, so their total would be 41 XP - 13 XP = 28 XP. Similarly if the Rebel Alliance builders produced 35 XP over that planet, their total XP would be 35 XP - 5 XP = 30 XP. Thus the Rebel Alliance would win the planet, even if they had produced less XP in the battle due to their lower maintenance cost, because they are a smaller faction in this example. In this way, conquering new planets becomes easier for smaller factions. Generally the ownership of the planets would also probably change more often, because when you lose a planet, your cost also goes down at the same time when your opponent cost goes up and it becomes easier for you to try to reconquer the lost planet back to your hands again. This also makes it more important to actually start to think about strategy over the targets of the planets that a faction wants to conquer. E.g. one must carefully consider, whether they want to own Tatooine if it only produced one VP but significantly added to the maintenance cost, so it would not be sensible to simply try to conquer everything you can possibly reach. (There are ways to make this even more interesting by carefully considering the logic of the map. E.g. a "cheap" planet with only 1 VP but which lies in an important intersection of the map and the control of which could possibly block the movement of other players, would produce interesting questions whether to try to conquer it or not.) Story wise the maintenance cost could be thought to represent the cost of having to spread a faction's military forces to ever more widespread area to take care of guarding and escort duties as well as fight pirates and collect customs and generally maintain law and order and fight corruption and crime in the area of the possessed planets.

Hi all, I have been eagerly following this game and I am looking forward to join you guys for this new season with some pretty crazy stuff coming up. The most crucial improvement that might need some consideration to my mind before launching the new season might be to set more balance between each Faction. As I have understood, the Imperial Triumvirate has gained the largest and the most eager group of builders, and while understandable (the Empire is the coolest faction to my mind as well and @Darth Bjorn has put on exceptionally impressive and inspiring examples to follow) the game element would probably intensify, if the different factions would have more or less the same capacity to produce new builds. The balance could be improved at least in two ways (these are just suggestions that came to my mind): 1. Trying to somehow guide new recruits to the factions having less builders. The new builders should be at least informally encouraged to pick a faction with less builders to have a more balanced game. One could also think about a recruitment mechanism, where the faction that the most recently gained a new member, cannot recruit another new recruit before some other faction recruited one first. EDIT: The following was a first draft. Check the next message. It has an actually potential idea. 2. The counting of Victory Points (VPs) could be periodically balanced. This means dividing the scoring system to shorter periods, call them e.g. rounds or perhaps in this case offensives or phases. In practice, in a predefined amount of time the number of VPs gained will resolve the winner of each round, after which a new round would begin the VPs of each faction once again set to 0. This would make it less likely that any one faction would gain overpower with like 100 VPs rendering the second one as well as the rest of the factions with 20 VPs or so being doomed to lose without any chance of winning the season anymore. Thus instead of playing one ice hockey game that will last a year or two, there would be a season of games each contributing to winning whole season. Edit: there are also other more ingenious ways to balance the VPs than simply dividing the scoring in periods, because in this case it would be of course nice to associate the VPs with the control over a planet. However, the point being, it would probably make sense to have some mechanism balancing the game so that the big factions do not simply eat out the smaller ones merely by being big. The board game Eclipse has one cool example of this. It induces a cost for owning a planet. The more planets you own, the more is the cost, which can render big factions (Eclipse is also about conquering the galaxy) more fragile than the smaller ones in the sense that too many possessions can make you easily lose a lot of them when the enemy attacks, because the high cost of maintaining your possessions will limit your other resources in that game. This is just a general idea, the point of the whole message now being to mostly open this issue for discussion.

if you are in no hurry, I would check the average price of the Bricklink for used condition, then ask for a hundred dollars more and just wait, because the collector sets tend to only gain value in time, and it is unlikely that any of those models would see remakes anytime soon. However, if you don't have the patience to wait for years (or if she doesn't), you probably should set your price against the UK sellers in Bricklink. This is easy as Bricklink has an option to find sellers by country as well. Remember that the potential EU buyers must nowadays pay the VAT (21%?).

Thank you for the answer @ARC2149Nova and @GlacierPhoenix The reason why I dislike the BrickArms E-11 (I mean, it is not bad, but it is just 3/5) is that it does not catch the most important shape of the gun right. It is smaller than the other options from other makers and thus a little more proportionate, but the movable (not movable in Lego but movable in real life) handle at the bottom of the trunk should extend beyond the pipe, but it does not, which makes the minifigure version of the gun look silly. The scope should also have only one attachment point to the trunk, but I admit that is only a nuance. Nevertheless, the fact that the pipe and the handle are not in correct relation to each other is a bad thing. Here is a reference (sorry, I would draw the difference in red, but I don't have a program for it just now, hope you can still see it): BigKidBrix E-11 actually gets both of these things right: I have quite a few of the both versions, can't decide which one is the better one in the end. BigKidBrix is overly large and especially the grip where the minifigure holds the gun is overly long, much longer actually than what it seems to be in pictures. You can in fact attach two minifigure hands on top of each other to one grip.